2011/01/16
different times
By way of Slate, we can read John F. Kennedy’s Harvard application, sent in 1935. Things must have gotten (much) harder. Would this application get you in these days, even as a legacy candidate? I’d be surprised. Competition in admissions arises from scarcity of education opportunities. Is education necessarily a scarce resource? Perhaps not, but as an abstract enabling opportunity, that scarcity cannot be eliminated, I don’t think, even with the likes of OpenCourseWare, etc. This is by definition: the scarcity is what makes a thing (e.g. an elite education) an enabling opportunity.
